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D oreen woke the next morning to her phone ringing. It was Mack. She groaned as she answered it.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his tone sharp.

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “While you were at trial and then working late last night, I did a bunch of research at the library. I guess I wasn’t watching my posture.”

“Oh, so that’s what that groan was about,” he noted. “Sorry, you do need to watch those chairs down there.”

“I know. They’re painful.”

He chuckled. “I’m hoping to be done a little bit earlier with court today,” he shared, “and I would suggest lunch.”

“Oh, lunch would be lovely. Do you want to come here, and I can cook something, or do you want to go out?”

He thought about it for a moment. “It doesn’t matter, but I was thinking about going out.”

“Good, I’m up for that. You pick the place, and I can meet you there, or you can swing by and grab me.”

“ Hmm , maybe I’ll just meet you there. That way I don’t have to feel guilty about leaving the animals behind.”

She burst out laughing. “Got to love how they’ve already got you wrapped around their little paws.”

“It’s always hard to leave them,” he admitted. “So I’ve come to understand why you tend to take them everywhere.”

“Yep,” she agreed, “and it’s not the easiest when I do have to leave them. But, for lunch out, I will.”

“Ha, so it’s just needing the right excuse. I don’t know where you want to go. Maybe think about it, and I’ll try to give you a call when I get a break.”

“Sure, but if you’ve got any places that you want to go to, that’s fine, though I wouldn’t mind Asian—or more specifically Japanese or Thai?”

“Sure, a couple good places are downtown, if you’re okay to come here,” he suggested. “You can just park in one of the parking spots, and we can walk. Meet me at the courthouse, if you like.”

“Sure,” she said.

They set the timing tentatively for noon, and then he was gone.

She’d known he wasn’t looking forward to court, but she couldn’t imagine why anybody ever would. It was one of those things that you had to do as part of your job. At least he had to do it as part of his job. She couldn’t imagine it being something anybody would want to sign up for. But then Mack was one of those guys to do it without complaint because it was his job. Doreen, on the other hand, was a different story, and she knew that about herself. Parts of the job stuff could get pretty rough and boring for her.

The thought of returning to the library was enough to make her cringe. She’d gotten through twenty years’ worth of deaths, but she still needed to correlate any deaths against all those births. And that meant another day of slogging her way through microfiche.

When she went back down to the library, the librarian looked at her and winced. “You look as if you had a rough night.”

“No, I have a sore back,” she muttered, “from those chairs.”

The woman nodded sympathetically. “Sorry about that,” she muttered. “You didn’t get enough information?”

“I sorted the births and the obituaries yesterday,” she noted, “but I didn’t get a chance to cross-reference the births against the obituaries.”

“Oh my, I hadn’t considered that.”

“I only wrote down any of the deaths at the time around when the child died, but I missed some stuff. Now I plan to run through the names that I didn’t check, versus the names that I have here.” She sighed. “It shouldn’t take that long—at least not as long as yesterday took.”

And, with that, she marched to the back, determined to make this as fast as possible. And it was; it was also very depressing because, in the end, she came up blank.

As she walked out to the front, the librarian looked at her, and Doreen shook her head. “Nope, no joy. I knew it was a long shot anyway.”

“Of course,” the librarian agreed sympathetically. “I can’t say I’ve had any luck coming up with anybody who lost their baby at that age either. Not that I would know them personally anyway.”

“No, of course not.” Doreen sighed. “And again the whole thing is a long shot, but we’ll do what we can do.” And, with a smile, she walked outside. One of the other ladies who had been in the library walked out with her.

“What is it you’re looking for?” she asked, with a nervous smile. “Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing what you were talking about with the librarian.”

“I’m looking for information on a little girl who died around thirty-five years ago, give or take ten years,” Doreen shared, with half a smile.

“Anybody who’s been around that long,” she noted, “will probably be in the old folks’ home.”

“That’s true, and I’m heading down there soon enough myself.” Doreen waved to the woman and headed to Nan’s. It was only 11:00 a.m. Doreen figured that she could check in and could get an update from Nan’s crew down there, and then she could have lunch with Mack, without worrying about this check-in. As she walked up to Rosemoor, she was determined to avoid any contact with the argumentative woman who had accosted Doreen earlier. As she got nearer to Nan’s apartment and walked to Nan’s patio, that awful woman appeared. Doreen quickly disappeared into Nan’s apartment, hoping the woman hadn’t caught sight of her.

Nan looked up and frowned at her. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I was hoping I could touch base with everybody and see if you guys had come up with anything.”

“I don’t think we’ve even had time, dear, but it’s on everybody’s agenda today. After the nap fiasco yesterday, you know…”

“Right.” Doreen nodded.

“Naps are important at our age, you know?” she declared, with a bright smile.

“Of course they are. I was just checking in to see if you had anything to go on.”

“Oh, dear. No luck so far, I assume?”

“No, nothing,” Doreen admitted ruefully. “I did go back to the library and checked the obituaries against the births from that long ago.”

“The question is whether it could have been a slightly different time frame. How many years did you cover?”

“I did a twenty-year sweep, starting fifty years ago up to thirty years ago, and checked the names of the obituaries against the names of the births, looking for something that would match our scenario, but I came up empty-handed.”

“Which means what?” Nan asked, frowning at her.

“Which means—and I am not sure of this—but I highly suspect that it was murder and that whoever did this obviously didn’t want anybody to know. So either they didn’t record the birth, which I guess is quite possible in a home birth or something, or they didn’t record the death. Or they could have moved, and nobody would have been the wiser.”

“Right, all of which makes a whole lot of sense and unfortunately is no surprise.”

“Exactly,” she muttered. “Yet I really want to get more information on this.”

“You just don’t want to disappoint the captain,” Nan noted shrewdly.

Doreen winced. “Don’t want to disappoint the captain, don’t want to disappoint Mack,” she admitted. “There, that’s my weakness.” She raised both hands in frustration. “I want them to see me in a good light.”

Nan smiled at her, then walked over and gave her a big hug. “Oh, my dear, that’s one thing you never need to worry about. They see you in a good light already.”

“You think so?” she asked, frowning. “I’m not so sure.”

“I’m sure. I’m absolutely sure. You don’t need to worry on that account at all. Still, I understand what you’re saying. You don’t want to disappoint anybody, but nobody can get all the answers all the time. The fact that you’ve closed as many cases as you have is quite remarkable.”

“I know. I know.” Doreen frowned at her grandmother. “It still seems to be a cop-out.”

“Not a cop-out at all,” she murmured. “Just an acknowledgment that nobody—not even you, my dear—can solve every case.”

She laughed. “True enough. But to change topics, I’ve got to run. I’m going to meet Mack for lunch today. Then go home and try to coordinate all the material I have into something slightly more cohesive than I currently have.”

And with that she gave her Nan a hug and a peck on her cheek and left to join Mack for lunch and a bit of a break from the information rolling around in her head.